


Brothers

by Yve



Category: Rune Factory (Video Games), Rune Factory 3, Rune Factory 4
Genre: 'an apology' theme, 'character backstory' theme, 'departing on a journey' theme, 'scars' theme, Angst, Closure, Dwarf & Nymph timeline, RFSpringFever2015, Reconciliation, established relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-24 21:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3785632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yve/pseuds/Yve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ordinarily no one asked about the scar and Gaius never volunteers the story either. When his new girlfriend Evelyn ventures that very inquiry one afternoon, it dredges up memories he doesn't like reliving. One person aside from himself feels the same kind of painful association with Gaius' blind eye, though. Decades after the day Bado left home, both honorary brothers have walked very different paths, but the eventual peace and contentment both found far from home may yet heal old scars, both seen and unseen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same timeline as my fic entitled [Dwarf & Nymph](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1584671/chapters/3366875)  
> Present day in this story is after the end of D&N but the memories take place long before the events of D&N.

“How did this happen, anyway?” Evelyn traced delicate fingertips down the long pale blue scar on the right side of Gaius’ face where he reclined on a sofa near the forge in his workshop. There was very little that could persuade the lean, dark-haired dwarf to put down his hammer before total exhaustion kicked in, but a few minutes’ relaxing with his always oddly-dressed girlfriend in his arms had a way of luring him away from the fire and iron that typically occupied all his waking hours. Evelyn had set aside the peculiar hat on which a stuffed animal, something like a white cat and a dog mixed, perched with glassy dark eyes. Her glossy pink hair draped about her shoulders, reflecting the daylight from the window and the burning golden light of the forge fire nearby.

Her eyes were wholly focused on him, a compliment that she rarely paid to anyone, so thoroughly did her own obsession on her craft occupy her mind. Most days she couldn’t be distracted from whatever outfit her imagination was cooking up to make next. In this aspect their personalities were identical, so neither blamed the other when their craft eclipsed the rest of the world. Yet, the odd pair of lovers showed preference for one another even over forging and fashion and _that_ was the surest sign either could give the other that they were each other’s highest priority. Evelyn blushed as Gaius’ lips parted but he hesitated to speak. His eyebrows moved slightly as if to knit together with concern, but his mild expression did not transition clearly into another emotion yet.

“Sorry…” She murmured quietly. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.” Gaius made his face apologetic and shook his head slightly.

“Nah, it’s not really a secret or anything, I just… don’t think about it often. It happened when I was a teenager. I worked a piece of iron carelessly and it shattered. He reached up and traced a finger down over his closed right eye and cheek. As the fingertip passed down below the eye, he opened the eyelid carefully, blinking a few times. Evelyn gasped, her brows tenting above her eyes in sympathy pain as she saw his right eye for the first time.

Beneath the half-closed eyelid, which he could not fully open anymore, the cornea of his eye bore a long-ago healed scar. The whole uneven surface of the front of his eye was pale ivory, the color of the iris erased or obscured by layers of scar tissue. It was something of a grisly sight that made others’ eyes water when they saw it, so he’d made a habit of keeping his right eye closed. It’d been a good many years since the last time he’d shown anyone what it looked like. Even Raven had never asked him about it, shying away from the subject as if it were a wound that still gave him pain. He wondered what everyone thought the incident that had half-blinded him actually was. Whatever they were imagining, the real thing couldn’t be as traumatic as the faces they made suggested. And after all, it wasn’t the injury to his eye that had wounded him… but it had wounded someone else.

‘Eye for an eye?’ He thought ruefully, remembering the first thing he’d thought when he woke up in the village's tiny clinic with an elderly dwarven medicine woman bent over him, changing bandages and applying salve to the long gash across his face. The emotional blow he’d been dealt may have indirectly led to his ruined eye, but the scar on his face had given a pain of equal measure to the person who’d hurt him first.

Gaius’ mouth tightened as the thought came back, and Evelyn did not miss the subtle shift in his expression.

“You can definitely be careless at times,” She chided with a smirk, then let her face slip back into a graver expression, “but there was more to it than just a momentary slip up wasn’t there?”

Gaius blinked both eyes again and sighed, shrugging.

“Maybe.” He replied, lamely. His throat tightened. What was all this coming from, anyway? It’s not like it still hurt… not _that_ much, anyway. But, he couldn’t deny that talking about it was _not_ coming easily.

“Well, I’d like to hear the whole story… when you feel up for telling it.” She said softly.

Dear, subtle, sweet Evelyn. He gave a half-hearted chuckle with an embarrassed expression. Gratitude mingled with something less easily defined just below his heart. It was something like the numb shock just after being dealt an unexpected blow. The body, or in this case his heart, hadn’t had time to catch up to events enough to feel actual pain, but it was coming. She leaned in and kissed him, once on the scarred cheek, once on the now-closed eyelid of his blind eye, and once on the lips, her mouth warm and soft and leaving a tingling sensation behind. She liked to wear lipstick with pure cinnamon oil in it some days, and the slight stinging sensation her kisses left behind on those occasions was an interesting little surprise that made his heart flutter. Everything about her seemed like a twisted, exotic version of luscious, delicate femininity. The abundant curiosities about her person and her personality were all delightful to him, and he reveled in every strange surprise she brought him.

“I have to go now, but let’s have dinner later, okay? Meet me at Blaise’s restaurant at six?” She murmured in the intimate volume only lovers can produce. He nodded, smiling mutely at her. She returned the smile and squeezed his calloused right hand once before turning to go. He followed her with his eyes until her silhouette disappeared from the front doorway into the afternoon sunlight. All was quiet in the empty workshop. This building that was all at once his workshop, a store, and his and Raven’s home suddenly seemed too large and too empty. Missing all company but that of his unwanted memories made the uncomfortable feeling in his chest swell again. He stood up and moved to the forge and anvil out of pure muscle memory.

This was where he sought comfort, stability, reassurance, and it had nearly always been that way… but that had backfired once before. He looked down at the hammer in his right hand. He’d already picked it up without realizing it, but for once Gaius had no desire to lift the tool to strike the anvil. This particular mood and this particular memory could not be chased away in the rhythmic impact of iron on iron. His mouth tightened again, still sealed shut over the story he’d hesitated to tell her. Then, in the way only ugly memories can, the cinema of bygone events flickered to life behind his eyes and he slipped into a dazed reliving of that day.


	2. Leaving

“I’m leaving.” The always familiar, deep voice of his closest companion nearly stopped Gaius’ heart and his breath caught in his throat, his eyes stinging and blinking rapidly as his vision blurred in both. He glared daggers into a pair of eyes virtually identical to his own, gray as storm clouds and blue as the ocean all at once, with a peculiar metallic glint when sunlight fell on them. Bado looked back down at him with stern, obstinate determination written all over his long face and in the tension all throughout his lanky, still adolescent physique. The other dwarf was much taller than Gaius. In fact, he was taller than most people in the entire village, and his height was the only reason everyone knew by sight that he and Gaius _weren’t_ siblings by birth. Even so, they were still brothers, at least to Gaius.

After all, that was the only conceivable reason that hearing those two words could hurt _this_ badly.

“You’re an idiot.” Gaius hissed. “You’re going to get yourself killed, but even if you survive, you’ll hate it.”

“What do you know about it?” His cousin shot back, the timber of his deep voice shaking with venomous defiance. “What could you _possibly_ know about it?”

“I don’t have to go to war to know it’s hell… and you shouldn’t have to either.”

“Tch” Bado gave an impatient noise of dissent and turned around, hoisting his knapsack on his shoulder. He took two of his long strides toward the door with his big feet thumping on the floor, seized the handle with one of his overlarge hands, and then hesitated…

“I don’t expect you or anyone else to believe in me. That’s the whole point of doing this, after all. I’ll show you and everyone else in this place I’m worth the iron in my blood.” Bado said grimly. The old dwarven saying made Gaius’ blood boil all the more.

“No one here thinks that way about you!” He growled through clenched teeth. “How many times do I have to tell you? You have nothing to prove!” Bado actually turned around, all but baring his teeth in anger.

“Don’t bullshit me, Gaius! You heard what Yvallen said. You were there!”

“Rhaaa!” Gaius roared in frustration, gesticulating in exasperation between running his hands through his hair and choking on his own voice. “Who _cares_ what Yvallen thinks! The old badger _isn’t_ your father, but even if he was, you should know better than to take that stuff so seriously!” Bado’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head faintly in furious disbelief.

“You really don’t get it, Gaius. You’ve always had a place here. You aren’t extra baggage someone has to look after. It was too much trouble to keep me even for my real father, so why would yours or Yvallen feel any different?” He snarled slightly, cold bitterness in his voice. “But when I come back a paragon—a warrior, and not just in namesake—he and everyone else here won’t look at me like that anymore!”

“I wish you’d fucking listen to me…” Gaius swore, half breathless in sheer, impotent rage and grief.

“Aren’t those my words?” Bado replied, low, shaking his head slightly again. He turned around for the door once more, looking back over his shoulder with a tired, pained expression; all the anger and insecurity evaporated for one moment.

“Goodbye.” He said, and passed through the door.

A long, heavy silence settled in the room while the angry words of the honorary brothers sank into the stone and wood of the house’s walls and foundation.

Bado had fled this place, and so would he. Gaius turned on his heel and stamped out of the house, wrenching open the back door and sprinting across a vegetable patch and the makeshift training ground Bado had set up in the earlier days of his obsession with joining the Noradian Knighthood. Battered scarecrows wearing wooden armor sagged on their crossbeams, the straw sticking out of their burlap bodies stirring slightly in the breeze behind Gaius as he sprinted past them. The pounding of his feet on the hard earth was just hard enough to numb the hurt for one instant each stride. He only slowed once he was in the workshop.

The forge fire was already kindled and roaring, thankfully. He needed fire and iron to quench his anger and grief in _now_. His right hand snatched up the handle of his hammer, and his left seized a blank blade from the hellish mouth of the hot forge. Maybe it was something Yvallen had started for his own satisfaction, or maybe it was one he’d prepared for Bado to work that afternoon. Gaius didn’t know and he couldn’t care. The iron was only folded to half of its eventual strength and required steady power to form it now. It was just as well it was not a task for finesse, as he had nothing subtle or gentle in him, just now. He slapped the hot metal onto the anvil and brought his hammer to bear with a wide arc of all the lithe strength his slender limbs could manage.

Bado was the workhorse. He was the one who could pound away all day and night with single-minded focus and strength to match. He was the one with the power to work any alloy and the sense to make art out of raw ore. Bado was the favorite of the old forge master and the apple of his eye. Gaius hadn’t been big enough to admit he was jealous, and now it didn’t matter. His rival in apprenticeship had just removed himself as a competitor, but so too had his brother removed himself from his life.

He couldn’t stop him. Nothing he said had mattered. They’d grown more and more distant the more the gangly, shy youth had driven himself to impress Yvallen, and the more he’d become determined to prove himself by becoming a knight. Gaius had opposed the notion vehemently from the start, but that had only served to discredit him in his cousin’s eyes. Now, he’d convinced himself that Gaius and everyone else in the village didn’t think he _could_ become a knight. Somehow, he and all the rest of Dramhau clan had failed to make Bado feel valued, and now he was gone.

The loud clang of metal on metal drowned out the ungraceful sounds that tore out through Gaius’ clenched teeth as he hammered away, trying to forget what he hated to admit, even in his own thoughts.

No one else would feel this way… No one else was close to him. For all he could say, it might take days for anyone to even notice that Bado was missing. Sure, Yvallen would immediately begin complaining loudly that that ‘slacker’ was blowing off work, but he wouldn’t ask after his wellbeing… and he wouldn’t go looking for the boy. Somewhere between his own insecurities and the oddities of his manner, Bado just hadn’t connected with the clan. Knowing that, maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he would come to feel insignificant.  _That_ didn’t make Gaius feel any better. He slammed the hammer down again and again, finally giving voice to the tangle of unhappy emotions writhing in his breast.

“Idiot!” He hissed through clenched teeth, “Gods damn him, that fool is going to die on some human’s sword hundreds of miles from home and there was –never—any—reason—to—leave!!”

Prizing the warrior ideal was very old thinking for most dwarven clans, or so his mother had told him. Her eyes were silver, metallic like all dwarves but completely devoid of color. She had come from a different clan, miles and miles from Dramhau’s little hamlet. Gaius’ clan’s paragon who’s name they all shared had been a warrior, tall and grave and fearless. A great bronze statue of him gazed sternly down at the ancient, crumbling stone gateway in front of the village square. His bearded face and bulky, muscular physique beneath plate armor with squareish, masculine hands grasping the hilt of a huge claymore was described in metal and the awe of him was born in every infant of the village. Only seven generations had passed since the ‘old days’. The other clans may have moved on, but Dramhau’s descendants hadn’t forgotten their ancestor, the legendary dwarven knight.

One child had taken this idea more seriously than the rest, it turned out. Ever since Bado had grown out of childhood and begun to resemble a man, albeit a gangly, long-limbed one, he’d begun to overlap his own identity with that of his ancestor. Despite the lack of a full beard yet, the 17 year old still resembled Dramhau’s statue and the engravings of him in the old elders’ hall hollowed out of the mountainside to an uncanny degree. Gaius could have smashed Dramhau’s bronze head off his shoulders with his hammer, if only he could reach the damnable statue. If it weren’t for _him_ , Bado would never have gotten this harebrained scheme into his thick skull in the first place.

“Damn him!” He repeated, hissing through his teeth again and again as he flailed wild, reckless strikes upon the blank steel blade. His vision blurred and his eyes stung as tears welled up. Why couldn’t he stop him? Why wouldn’t he listen? He didn’t want his brother to go… he didn’t want him to die. Gaius never needed a reason to love Bado as his own sibling. He’d been there since he could remember, after all. Two years older and sharing Gaius’ family’s home since he was 4… As far as Gaius was concerned, having been born to different mothers didn’t make a whit of difference. They’d always been together… until now.

“Rhaaaa!” He brought the hammer down with a feral cry, droplets of tears shaking from his eyes as the impact reverberated through his body back through his arm. Then it happened.

The sound registered first. A horrible wrenching, resonating clang that broke and bent the air around it tore at his ears. Dazed, he realized he had turned away from the anvil. More metallic voices cried out with small clatters as pieces of shattered steel hit the floor. A hot, strange sensation spread across the right half of his face. He blinked and pain erupted with violent force, blinding him and ripping away his balance and all rational thought. Vaguely he heard himself shout out and the floor hit him. It took a moment to register he was no longer upright. Fire was searing his eye, his right hand had released the hammer and clutched over it. A coppery, tangy scent was filling up his nose. Something hot and wet was spreading down his face, neck, hand, and arm…

He pulled his shaking hand back and stared at it, all his breath stopped in his chest.

Deep, red, glistening blood covered the whole of his hand and forearm… more blood than he’d ever seen. Could a person even survive the loss of so much blood? Dizzyness assailed him and the room began to spin. Pieces of his unruly dark hair plastered to his face in the blood. Panic began spreading frantic searching tendrils throughout his mind. Then, one more realization took shape. One half of what he saw made sense… the ruby red gore drenching his hand, the red-orange light of the forge, and the familiar walls and ceiling of the smithy… but the other side was a broken, unknowable nightmare.

Blind—

The last thought flashed through his mind before blackness and nothingness took him like a swift wind. He didn’t even feel his head and arm hit the wooden floor. He only lay motionless and unconscious in a spreading pool of his own blood.


	3. History

Gaius stood stone still before the forge, his left hand pressed over his eyes, and his teeth clenched behind closed lips. People generally said that a person can’t remember pain in a literal sense. Maybe it was true at least as far as feeling physical pain within a memory was concerned, but emotional pain _could_ come back… and it did.

He didn’t want to keep reliving all of it but one part of the memory flowed seamlessly into the next and there was no way to stop it or shake it off. He tried not to recall the pathetic, helpless sounds he’d made while tossing and turning in a three day fever in the wake of his injury; tried not to picture the shadows beneath his mother’s eyes and her fragile expression, terrified and sad and grateful all at once, when he finally came to. Most of all, he tried not to remember the first conversation he’d had as soon as he was coherent again.

He tried, but it came back anyway, just as vivid as the rest.

“Mum…” he croaked, “Bado… h-he left. We’have t’go after ‘im... bring ‘im back…” He’d struggled to sit up just as soon as the medicine woman would allow it and look directly into his mother’s tear-streaked face as he spoke. Bandages obscured half his face, hampering his speech a little more on top of the pain and exhaustion and the leftover dizziness of the fever. Even so, he didn’t miss the sudden change in her expression at the mention of the other boy.

Bado didn’t call Theanna ‘mother’ or ‘mum’ or ‘ma’. He never had. And she never called him ‘son’, either. Though she and Astor had had raised him alongside Gaius and though he lived in their home, there was something strained and unpleasant in her face when she spoke of him, and when she thought he wasn’t looking. Something of the stigma of his father’s character had never left the boy in her eyes. Adults liked to pretend they were so much more emotionally mature than children and teenagers, but that illusion had already been dispelled for Gaius.  He’d already seen the lie in it when his mother looked at Bado.

When her cousin-in-law was no longer around to blame for his wife’s death, that unresolved bitterness had fallen on the boy he’d left behind. Yes she’d taken him into her home, and yes she’d done her best to welcome him into her heart, for his mother, Rosemary’s, sake… but some part of her couldn’t really accept him, not when she saw Tigan’s likeness in his face. It only got worse as he grew up and the family resemblance grew stronger.

Now, even half blind and barely released from his fever dreams, Gaius saw the same old resentment flicker across his mother’s eyes. There was something else there too. Guilt.

Her eyes darted sideways and she swallowed, something uncomfortable and embarrassed in the tension in her shoulders. Gaius waited through the silence for a few moments, then tried again.

“…Mum?” He repeated timidly, the question still in his remaining eye.

“Gaius…” She began in that strained attempt at a gentle tone that parents adopt while giving bad news to a child.

“You’ve been out for a few days, son.” Astor joined the conversation with his hand on Giaus’ knee overtop the blankets of the clinic bed. “It’s too late to track him, now…” Gaius’ left eye slid sideways until he noticed his father sitting at the bedside for the first time. His throat closed as the words sank into him and he put the pieces together. Somewhere behind the bandages and salves his ruined eye attempted to sting and water in unison with his left, but actual tears did not come. He smothered his heart underneath anger and resentment rather than face the pain and sorrow of the realization.

“Did you even notice he was gone?” He choked out in a broken voice full of bitterness and grief, “Do you even care?”

“Of course we care!” Astor returned in an indignant, scolding tone, but still in the volume of a visitor to the clinic. “But we weren’t going to leave you to look for him, Gaius. Not in your condition!”

Gaius looked away sideways with his good eye, refusing to reply. He knew guilt was coming for his accusations, but he wasn’t sorry for it. Not right now. He’d feel it later, when the current onslaught of feelings had already run through him.

It wasn’t fair and he knew it. Bado wasn’t their son, after all. Of course they’d sooner tend to him, sick with worry over his injury, rather than charge off into the blue after someone who’d left on his own, voluntarily. But… he _wanted_ his parents to love Bado the way he did. He wanted them to worry about him the way he did. Bado may not have been born of the same parents, but they _were_ brothers… in all the ways that mattered. He didn’t like admitting that the other boy had been right about the villagers treating him differently. He didn’t like admitting that Astor and Theanna would always put him first over Bado. Most of all… he didn’t like the growing conviction that his recklessness had indirectly ensured that no one would go looking for his missing cousin because they were too preoccupied nursing him.

Astor stared hard at him while Theanna averted her gaze from her son’s face, her brows knitted together.

“He doesn’t need to be rescued, Gaius. He chose to go.” His father’s tone was gentle, but firm. “I know you didn’t want him to leave, but… everyone has to find their own path in life. You can’t force him to stay here and even if you could… it isn’t right.”

“You really think he’s better off alone on some battlefield?” Gaius’ voice was cold and broken.

“I think he needs to find himself…” Astor replied slowly, “The road he takes to do so is up to him.”

Gaius turned his head away again, swallowing around the lump in his throat repeatedly. He wanted to refute his father. He wanted to deny that piece of advice. Who cared if it sounded wise? However solid those words sounded here in the safety of the village, they wouldn’t protect Bado from the blade of an enemy soldier’s sword pointed at his heart.

No… It couldn’t possibly be right to just let him go alone into the wide world without anything but himself to rely on. Worse still, to let Bado become a soldier and go to war… how could someone find himself among violence and death and misery?

Silently in that clinic bed he had promised himself to find his lost brother. Even if no one else in clan Dramhau cared enough to search for one of their number who’d walked out of their lives, he wouldn’t give up on Bado.

In the days that followed, Astor tried to reassure his son that the other boy would be alright. He was  young and strong and with his skillset, he’d probably end up making weapons for the knighthood, rather than fighting on the front lines. Gaius did not argue with his father, but he did not accept his assurances, either. Neither did he make comment on his mother’s subdued mood, despite the rapid, promising recovery of her injured son. She seldom met his eye and that sense of guilt never left the angle of her head and the tension in her back.

Quietly he focused on recuperation and when his blind eye had settled into its new appearance and the scar running down his face no longer required bandages, he followed Bado’s footsteps out of Dramhau’s village.


	4. The Trail

Astor had not been wrong about the difficulty of finding Bado once his trail had gone cold. When he started he had nothing to go on except that it had been his brother’s goal to join the Noradian Knighthood. He made some progress by seeking out recruiters and inquiring to every knight and foot soldier he saw as he traveled, but even so It took seven months to track down the name of the company Bado was assigned to, and two more to catch up to them in the field.

Standing alone in his workshop in Sharance town, Gaius surrendered to the iron grip of his memories and slumped back down on to the sofa. Letting them play out would be less painful, now, than stopping.

The knights’ camp had been a strange mixture of majestic, patriotic symbols and wretched squalor and misery. The banner of the Noradian king, patterned with rampant dragons flew in blazing blue and gold on the end of long poles driven into the ground, and the armor on the horses and men shone fiercely with the bright, reflected sunlight. But, written in the lines on every person’s face throughout the camp was the weariness, grief, and sorrow of men who have seen their comrades die and who knew death was never far from reaching out its cruel hands to embrace them, too. In their sunken eyes, Gaius saw the fear, barely flickering still beneath smothering exhaustion. There does come a point when one becomes too fatigued to hold on to their own life, and Gaius shuddered to see so many so near to that precipice.

One thing only had made it possible to find Bado in all the vastness of the country and the very limited and incomplete records of who was even enlisted in the Noradian Knighthood. Relative to humans, Dwarves were rare in number. Of all the soldiers and innkeepers, stableboys, small town doctors, and saddlemakers Gaius asked about his lost brother, no one had ever heard of or seen more than one dwarven soldier in all the knighthood. Sometimes it was nothing more than a faint recollection of a tall man with strange eyes and pointed ears, and an even fainter recollection of where they had heard the company was headed, but anyone who had encountered the seventh royal infantry always had some impression of this one-of-a-kind individual. And now, as Gaius unabashedly walked into the seventh’s camp, the dull eyes of the men stirred to life a little as they saw him. Their brows furrowed slightly in puzzled recognition, but they did not approach him.

His one good eye swept over the camp, this way and that, looking for a familiar silhouette, and his ears strained to listen for a deep voice he knew as well as his own. No sign of Bado presented itself, and after he’d been almost from one end of the entire camp to the other, a different sound, just as familiar to him, caught his attention. The steady clanging rhythm of a blacksmith pounding away at an anvil carried through all the temporary shelters, horses, soldiery, and muddy landscape and drew him like a gull back to the ocean. Following the sound, he made straight for a large tent with an open chimney that smoke poured upward into the sky through. Just as he neared it a tall, blond man with a short goatee and wavy, shoulder-length hair stepped out of the canvas doorway, holding open the tent flap with one arm as his heavy boots crossed the threshold. His armor had bands of gold emblazoned on the pauldrons and the chestplate bore the same elaborate dragon emblem as the banners flying above them in the cold wind.

The man had plainly been lost in the contemplation of something that troubled him, judging by the way his brows furrowed and knitted together over the bridge of his sculpted nose, but even so he did not fail to detect the presence of someone standing just before him. He looked up and his cobalt blue eyes widened as they fell on Gaius. The knight’s eyes flicked right and left in a familiar-by-now gesture that meant he was noting the pointed, leaf-shaped ears protruding from beneath his untidy, dark hair. Gaius waited to see what the man’s reaction would be. The man hesitated a moment longer as he stared at Gaius, concern and interest and uncertainty tumbled over one another somewhere behind his vividly blue eyes, but in the end he took a breath and spoke a string of words that made Gaius’ heart jump into his throat.

“I know who you have come to see.” He said deliberately, in a gruff but earnest voice. Then, he put out a large, gauntleted hand and said, “I am knight commander Tristan Starson.” Gaius grasped the commander’s hand with his own gloved fingers and squeezed it firmly.

“Gaius Dramhau.” He said with a nod. Over the last few months he’d become accustomed to using his clan’s name like a surname. And, he’d become accustomed to hearing humans give their own names in two or three parts. There were so many humans, after all, he supposed they must have more than one name, or they’d never be able to know one person from another if they happened to share the same single first name. Knight commander Tristan nodded with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Pleased to meet you. Follow me.” He turned immediately and walked back into the tent from which the sound of hammer on steel was emanating. Gaius followed, struggling to choose between hyperventilating and holding his breath. He went with the latter.

He blinked his one good eye as he stepped inside the tent and adjusted to the dimmer light. In the back of the makeshift room there was a simple forge mounted on a cart. In it a fierce orange glow spread out, reaching to the canvas walls of the tent and throwing a figure standing just in front of it into a stark silhouette against the firelight. The man was very tall and broad shouldered, with thick muscular arms and legs and a barrel chest. A deep voice, slightly ragged but still familiar, came from the figure as he heard the commander reenter the tent.

“Thought you had work to do…” He said as he shoved a half-forged blade back into the fire and set down the tongs on a large, rusted hook protruding from the side of the forge at waist-height.

“I do, but it can wait a moment. There’s someone here to see you.”

The figure sighed and turned around with no particular excitement, revealing as he faced them the pointed ears on either side of his own face. He stepped forward, limping heavily on a bandaged leg, and the light from the entrance fell across him as he did so. Gaius’ good eye widened and he heard a hiss as he automatically sucked in a breath of air. 


	5. Apologies and Promises

Bado stopped short and flinched as recognition made his own steel blue eyes stretch wide open in surprise. His mouth fell open and those familiar eyes darted up and down, taking in Gaius’ whole body with one quick swoop and then locked on his face. Gaius’ own eyes made a similar gesture, taking stock of all his lost sibling’s considerable height.

He was bigger than before… not taller, though Bado had always been unusually tall even by human standards. The lanky limbs with oversized hands and feet were no longer gangly or awkward in appearance, but well-proportioned now. All the length of his arms and legs had filled in with the bulk of ample muscular strength. His shoulders, too, had broadened and his side burns had grown in thick and crept down the angle of his jaw. In the center of his jawline the beginnings of a goatee had begun to come in, but not a single mustache hair had appeared on his upper lip.

Overtop the improvements to his formerly adolescent physiology, however, he bore a ragged, battered outfit of many bandages, cuts, small scrapes and bruises on nearly every part of his skin that was exposed between his tattered clothing except his face. Gaius supposed Bado was probably too tall for an enemy to get a clean shot at his head. The leg he was favoring was wrapped in thick bandages, soaked through in parts with dark reddish-brown bloodstains. All these painful souvenirs he’d collected as a soldier were nothing though… _nothing_ to his eyes.

As children Bado’s eyes had always struck Gaius as bearing a distant expression, like his mind was always elsewhere. He didn’t always seem present even if he spoke to someone, but even so he had been innocent enough back then. Now… something, or many somethings that had transpired had wrung whatever was left of innocence out of him and lingered, haunting his gray-blue eyes. Bado’s gaze still seemed fettered by some distant thought, but now it was the pain of memories that refuse to be forgotten, so terribly had they etched themselves on the backs of his eyes.

The whole picture of him, grown up and changed into a wounded, rough-edged creature raked at Gaius’ heart. On that day almost a year ago, Bado had been little more than a restless youth, impetuous but pure in his hopes and aspirations. All he had wanted was acknowledgement… validation. That’s what had set him on the road to war to prove himself worthy of his lineage. Sometime later Gaius would have the wherewithal to wonder if his brother had found what he was looking for, despite the obvious cost to his physical and mental wellbeing, but in this moment only one thought formed on his lips.

“Y-you’re…” He whispered, “You’re _alive_!” His good eye stung and watered and the blind one tried to do the same in sympathy with its mate. In the end all he could do was blink several times over the tears forming in his good eye, forgetting for the moment to keep the scarred eye closed. Bado, for his part, winced and cringed at the sight of Gaius’ scarred face and gasped out an exclamation of his own.

“Gaius! Your _eye—“_ Bado shook his head slightly in disbelief, brow bent in sympathetic anguish. Gaius only stared up at his face, tears running out of his left eye down his face, mirroring in salt water the scar on the right side.

Two steps to the right, Tristan looked between them with an understanding and slightly sad expression. He gave a little ‘hm’, turned, and stepped out of the tent. Gaius heard the tall man plant his feet in front of the tent and stop. Gratitude flickered in his heart for this stranger who understood their situation without really knowing anything about it.

Gaius watched the stricken expression on his cousin’s face without blinking. He could almost see the wheels turning and the moment when, trembling like a rabbit despite his enormous size, Bado shifted to assuming responsibility for the physical trauma represented by the grisly scar across his eye. He _would_ take it that way, too. Without even knowing what had happened, without any real reason to believe it had been his fault, Bado would bear guilt for the harm that had befallen Gaius. It was in his nature; the quiet, gentle nature he’d been born with. Gaius bowed his head, smiling in a tangle of bitterness, relief, gratitude, and sorrow.

“You idiot…” He choked, then looked up, smiling with a sad curve in his brows. Confusion joined the other unhappy expressions in Bado’s face in response. “I’m glad—“ His throat closed briefly and he marshalled his will to finish the thought. “I’m glad you’re still just a big, overgrown wooly.” He choked out a laugh and Bado cracked a tired smile, lines forming around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah?” He said quietly in his deep voice. “Well… you’re still short.” Both brothers laughed weary, embarrassed little laughs. The soft smile stayed on Bado’s mouth but the sorrow hadn’t left his eyes, which lingered on the right side of Gaius’ face. After a short silence settled between them he spoke again, making some effort to sound casual, judging by the too-careful tone of his voice.

“So…” He nodded at Gaius, still staring at his ruined eye. “What happened?” Gaius saw the muscles in his neck working as he swallowed around his closed throat as soon as the words escaped his lips. He hesitated.

If he refused to explain what had happened, Bado would be all the more likely to think it had been his own fault and that Gaius was simply trying to protect him from the truth. But… if he did tell the story, it would only cement the notion. Gaius shook his head and shrugged.

“I got careless.” He said quietly, then nodded at Bado’s bandaged leg. “What about you? You look like half a wreck.” Bado looked down, spreading his hands and turning them over, showing the multitude of scars and recent small injuries on his arms.

“…Same…” He said simply, glancing at Gaius’ good eye and away again evasively. Gaius sighed and looked down at the floor. So that was how it was… each one trying to protect the other and it bred secrets between them. Another silence began to grow long.

“Well?…” Bado ventured after a short while with cautious, forced quiet in his voice, “Have you come to tell me to come home?” Gaius looked steadily into his eyes, drew a long breath and sighed it out through his nose over several seconds. The look in his mother’s eyes as soon as he had asked that they go after his wayward cousin flashed in his memory.

“…No.” He answered quietly. “I just… needed to find you… make sure you’re okay.” Bado stared back at him, swallowed, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Gaius gazed back without anticipation. To his own surprise as well as his cousin’s, it was enough… to see him… to know he yet lived and was in one piece, more or less.

“Tha—“ Bado began and his voice hushed halfway through the word, He pressed his lips together, swallowed again, and tried once more. “Thank you, Gaius…” Gaius nodded, looking down again. Another few breaths elapsed.

“Gaius?” Bado called quietly. Gaius looked up into his haunted eyes again. “I don’t regret leaving that place…” He began. Gaius winced. An earnest curve appeared in Bado’s brow. “…But I am sorry… for leaving _you_.” Remorse bent his head and his shoulders rounded as he spoke. Gaius sighed again with a helpless little smile and shook his head.

“I’m sorry too.” He said letting almost a year’s worth of tension fall out of him as his shoulders relaxed, “I don’t blame you for going… I think I understand why, now… I just wish you’d picked a safer road.” Bado gave a half-smile and a little huff of a laugh.

“Yeah, this life pretty much sucks.” He said, looking around the tattered portable tent with a half-approving glance. “And you were right about war bein’ hell.” He added cryptically, a dark note in his voice, but then shrugged, saying: “But, it’s mine, ya know? I chose this… what I am now, and whether I like it or not… well, there’s somethin’ kinda comforting about that.”

Gaius looked down and nodded mutely again.  He felt Bado’s eyes on him though he didn’t look up at him yet.

“…Y’know… you _could_ stay…” He said hesitantly.  Gaius blinked at the floor, and then shook his head.

“…No…” He said softly. “I don’t belong here and neither do you, Bado. I won’t try to make you change, but this isn’t me, and never will be.” He looked around at the little markers of military life in the tent: A double-long cot, a semi-organized pile of battered plate mail, one enormous claymore in a scabbard and another broken hilt leaning against a trunk beside it. “It isn’t you either. I just hope you figure that out before it kills you.” Bado smiled a knowing, tired smile that his eyes did not participate in.

“You’re not wrong.” He said deliberately.

Disappointment combined with a curious, tentative sense of peace washed over Gaius. He reached into his coat under a ragged travelling cloak about his shoulders and drew out a bundle of paper, envelopes, and quills. This he passed into the huge, soot-covered hands of his brother and looked up into those eyes that matched his own remaining one.

“Write to me.” He said firmly, warning him with his bent brow of the consequences should he fail to keep the promise. “Every week.” Bado nodded, looking half-grave as he braved a small smile.

“I will.” 


	6. Revival

Gaius sat alone on the small couch in his workshop with his face buried in his hands. All the years of his life since that day flickered through his memory in the form of hundreds of letters, written in angular dwarven letters and detailing the day to day life of his wandering sibling. Bado had indeed written faithfully every week. Sometimes Gaius could almost hear his voice when he read them.

They were always about silly things like strange little inventions he’d tried making or full of his poor taste in humor, complete with puns that made Gaius roll his eye and laugh quietly to himself. Bado even wrote occasionally about casual misadventures with women who fancied him for the status and reputation he eventually earned as a ‘legendary’ knight.

But… in between the lines of innocuous, lighthearted banter scrawled on paper, Gaius read a different story. Remembering the way Bado had shrugged off his question about his injuries, he noted the conspicuous absence of any description of fighting, warfare, battles lost or won, or anyone else in the knighthood… with only one exception.

Tristan Starson, the man who had stood outside the tent to guard a short, stolen moment of privacy for the two Dwarves to talk, was mentioned often in Bado’s letters. Bit by bit, Gaius inferred a bigger picture that described a man who had taken it upon himself to protect the young dwarven knight as best he could. He was grateful, truly, for the knowledge that someone was there for his honorary brother in the midst of war and blood and steel. Yet, it came with another feeling, sad and a little bitter. He’d wanted to continue as the one confidant his childhood best friend trusted. It was a very immature position to take, he knew, but still… that didn’t change that those emotions were there.

Over the entire seven years Bado was deployed with the Seventh Royal Infantry, the tone of his letters remained carefully contrived, never allowing anything more serious than a complaint about having to eat hardtack for a fortnight straight. Even so, the harder Bado tried to make his letters cheerful, the more convinced Gaius became of his true misery.

Finally, one letter broke the pattern. There were no jokes… no stories of pranks or misadventures or one-night-stands or Tristan’s sage advice. The words meandered enigmatically, never settling on one clear concept or another. The subject was life… and whether a person could really find happiness. A few words that trailed off into a scribbled out half-sentence pondered why so many people convinced themselves that there was something called ‘love’ between men and women. Amid his confusion Gaius had felt panic rising in his stomach. By the end of the letter, one thought was strung together in an ominous train of half-reason and then the writing stopped, signed in a misshapen scribble that suggested the author of the letter was barely coherent.

“It’s not that I regret one thing I did above all others… I don’t even know—I can’t think of another way I would have chosen. I don’t want a different life… any life is more or less like another, I think. I just feel… like I miss something… that I have never known in the first place.”

-Bado

The following week no letter came.

He wrote a second reply to the last letter, asking what was troubling him, if he was alright, and if he should go to him.

Another week passed with no word from his cousin.

He’d been sitting not far from this very spot in his workshop, trying to breathe slowly and stop imagining the worst. He had even prepared a note for his neighbors in Sharance to explain his sudden absence and packed a knapsack in preparation to go seek out the Seventh again when old Wells had knocked on his door and handed him an envelope addressed in human writing, rather than Dwarven script. He tore it open and felt even his blind eye race over the page in time with its seeing counterpart.

To Mr Gaius Dramhau,

                I am writing to inform you that Bado is alive and physically unharmed. I apologize for the delay in bringing you news and the worry it must have caused you. Recently I contrived to have Bado reassigned for the sake of his health. Active duty is no longer a viable option for him and in truth it is not truly sustainable even for a career soldier. He has been stationed at the castle of the Divine Wind in Selphia. I have enclosed a copy of the address so you may write to him or visit at your leisure. The new post is that of Lady Ventuswill’s Dragon Knight and his duties no longer involve regular combat. There is no need for you to fear for his safety there. Selphia is a peaceful town where my own family is settled, also.

P.S. If you do have leisure to visit him, I recommend it. I do not know if he will necessarily find continued correspondence by mail easy to maintain.

At your service,

Tristan Starson

As Gaius read the letter, he breathed again as his highest fear was assuaged only to be replaced by a less certain one almost as frightening. What had happened to Bado that warranted his reassignment and this polite, but cryptic explanation for it? He hoisted the pack onto his shoulder and gave Wells a hurried explanation before running out the door.

Gaius had expected to find Bado less than whole, whether in his reason or his spirit, but the real picture of the broken, fragile person that had been his closest companion in childhood pained him worse than if he’d lost both his eyes that day, seven years ago. Despite the imposing physical sum of Bado’s muscular, broad-shouldered frame and the full beard he now wore, there was something insubstantial about him now. It was almost as if the torn and frayed edges of his psyche and his heart were blowing in the wind like a tattered banner over an ancient ruin.

What he hadn’t expected, and what gave him hope, was the way the nearly seven foot tall dwarven man looked after and played with a four-year old girl with bright blue eyes and long blond hair. Tristan’s family in Selphia consisted of his wife, Lily, this little girl, Forte, and a newborn son, Kiel. In between times shared with the children and their mother, Bado was wilted, quiet, and hardly moved, but when Forte would run out from behind her mother’s skirt and jump up and down in front of him he would return to life like a vine reaching for sunlight. He would pick the little girl up, tickle her, toss her up gently in the air or perch her on his broad shoulders while she shrieked and laughed and exclaimed over the view from so high up.

He watched lily and her children with a mystified, expression full of faint longing and reluctant hope. He was always fussing over the little family and trying to help them any way he could. Perhaps it was because Tristan was still out on the battlefront and he meant to look after his friend’s family while he was away, but Gaius suspected it was more than that. Lily seemed so deliberate about involving her husband’s former subordinate in the day to day lives of herself and her children and she spoke to him almost like a child, himself. Her tone was as gentle and light as a doe nudging a fawn and Bado was as careful and timid in her presence as if he might accidentally frighten them away like rabbits grazing on a hillside.

As long as Gaius was in Selphia he watched Bado watching Lily, Forte, and Kiel, and he found himself wearing a hopeful little smile whenever Bado’s voice softened to speak to the children or when he hurried to carry something for Lily while she carried baby Kiel in her arms. While on duty he faded, standing or patrolling in the armored uniform of the Dragon Knight with a weary, solemn expression and empty eyes, but as soon as he was with the Starson family he shed the dark shadow of his despair and the lines that had been permanently etched at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth became the outlines of smiles and laughter.

Gaius could hardly believe what he saw. Even as a child, Bado had never laughed or smiled so regularly. Slowly his fear and apprehension thawed and he began to believe in a future for his wayward brother.  Eventually, Lily declared him the godfather of her children and Gaius marveled with a one-eyed stare and a surprised smile as his cousin celebrated by lifting Lily and her two children into an elated but gentle embrace of his muscular arms. By all accounts, Bado had found something here that he’d never had before and it had given his life new meaning.

Despite the happy change in his fortune, however, Bado hadn’t been freed of his demons. Tristan had been right about Bado finding written correspondence too difficult following his retirement from field soldiery. Writing letters on the regular felt too reminiscent of his days on active duty and he became so somber and anxious at times when sitting down to write that Gaius instructed him not to write to him any more if it gave him pain, despite his earnest wish to maintain contact with his honorary brother.

Lily had come to their rescue. She wrote Gaius as faithfully as Bado had before, giving frequent accounts of his progress toward healing and the times where he regressed, as well. Eventually, the divide between his elation while with his newfound family and the melancholy and remoteness of his character while working as a Dragon Knight became so great that some combination of efforts from Tristan and Lady Ventuswill, the dragon Bado served who had evidently become quite fond of him, saw to it he was dismissed from his post. He took up residence just down the street from the Starson household, having moved out of the barracks which reminded him too much of his wartime days, and opened a smithy in his small house, peddling tools, weapons and armor that he forged and crafted himself.

Eventually, though, a letter arrived from Lily bearing unexpected and devastating news. By some twisted fate, Gaius became the first person aside from Lily herself to know she would soon depart this world. She wanted him to know that she was not going to recover from her illness so he could reconnect with his cousin and support him when it happened. She’d known very well that Bado would take her death almost as hard as her own husband and children. When Tristan passed away not long after, Gaius might have feared Bado would take his own life but for the certainty he held that his cousin would consider himself the guardian of the Starson children henceforth. In this he had been right; the sense of purpose that Forte and Kiel had given Bado motivated his continued efforts and he became their foster father without hesitation. They were already family in practice, and they shared their grief in the wake of losing Tristan and Lily, so for a while at least, Forte, Kiel and Bado were all each other had.

During the years following Lily and Tristan’s passing, Bado made a scattered effort to write to Gaius and Gaius always replied. As Forte and Kiel grew up and became more independent, Bado’s interest in life waned again. He became preoccupied by the short-term amusement of trying ridiculous schemes to make money and garnered a mixed reputation in Selphia among those who had not known him well from the time he first moved there. Eventually the interval between letters became longer and longer until more than a year had elapsed since the last time Gaius had seen or read one word from his cousin.

Raven, the quiet, strange young woman Gaius had taken into his home when she turned up with no place to go and not a friend in the world, took up selling monster products in nearby cities and villages, and Gaius was quick to enlist her help in checking in on Bado when she visited Selphia. He was relatively sure Bado never knew Raven’s ulterior motive for visiting his shop, but then again, he didn’t particularly care whether it was a secret or not.

Once they had been each other’s closest companions, running along the riverbank in Dramhau’s hamlet barefoot and listening to each other’s snores as they slept in the same small bedroom in their childhood home. Once Bado followed his younger cousin everywhere and Gaius had been the only thing in the world he seemed to be interested in or care about. They had been brothers, though not by blood. And, no matter what else happened they still were Brothers in Gaius’ heart.

When Gaius’ hammer splintered one day while he’d lost himself in the abdication of forging iron for hours on end, there was only one person he would ask to make it whole again. He hadn’t known what it would be like, seeing his honorary brother again for the first time in two years, but whatever he had imagined during the trip to Selphia, he never anticipated what he’d found when he got there. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say: what _Bado_ had found.

Gaius sat up and leaned back against the back of the couch, his hands in his lap. A small, contented smile tugged on his lips as he remembered the young woman who had come into the ‘Meanderer’ blacksmith shop that was also Bado’s home mere minutes after he’d arrived and greeted his cousin, the way she’d looked at Bado, and the way he had looked at her, too.

Suddenly a sound jarred him out of his memories and he startled and looked over at the front door. He blinked and waited. There was a second knocking sound and he shook off the curious blend of melancholy and happiness that had settled on him like dew on the grass at dawn and stood up. A third knock came from the door and he called out: “Coming!”, wondering silently why they did not just enter the shop, like every other customer.

He reached for the handle and reminded himself to close his right eye, having relaxed it for once while he thought back on the event that had originally blinded it.

“How can I help y—“ He began as he opened the door and then stopped, his face turning to a portrait of surprise, then joy.

“Hello, Cousin!” A bright, booming voice announced, hitting Gaius’ pointed ears just before his single eye registered a tall dwarf with broad shoulders and a short beard, grinning from ear to ear and waving with one large, squareish hand while the other wrapped around a slender woman with emerald eyes and long, pale, shining green hair at his side.

“Hi, Gaius!” Frey called cheerfully before pulling him in an affectionate greeting hug. Bado put his arms around both of them and lifted them off the ground to give his own familial hello in a comical exaggeration of Frey’s attitude.

“Wow!” Gaius gasped, his breath shortened by Bado’s hold on him. After the taller dwarf set him and his own wife down on their feet again, he continued, “Guess there’s a first time for everything, but I wasn’t expecting a surprise visit from _you_!” He laughed. Bado shrugged, still grinning.

“Thought I’d make good on that promise to come visit you in happier times.” He said jovially, smile lines creasing around his mouth and eyes.

“Well color me surprised! I figured you two’d be honeymooning for a while yet to bother coming out to visit me in my sleepy corner of the world.” He set his hands on his hips and tilted his head at them both.

“Yeah, well somethin’s come up and we need to give you an update. Pen and paper won’t cut it either, so don’t even give me any grief for not writin’ again!” Bado replied, falling into the over-casual speech that was his habit when he was with his cousin.  Gaius stared up at Bado’s gray-blue eyes, exactly like his own… at least, back when he still had two eyes.

Here he was, arm in arm with the woman who brought him to life after he’d shut himself up in his own lonely heart for who knows how many years. He looked so happy… so _whole_. Since he and Frey had found each other and fallen in love, Bado had been so much more than he used to be. Gaius couldn’t help but wonder if he ever thought about the days when they were kids… back when he was all Bado had. He wondered if his cousin remembered when they were brothers, growing up together. He wondered if Bado still saw him that way…

“Hey! Don’t go spacin’ out, now!” Bado laughed, waving a big hand in front of Gaius’ face.

“Sorry, sorry” Gaius smiled and laughed in an embarrassed tone.

“Oooh!” Frey shrilled. “I can’t hold it in! If you don’t tell him, I’m gonna!” She bounced up and down on her toes, absolutely giddy with restrained excitement. Bado laughed aloud with his head back, all carefree happiness and love.

“Alright, already! Settle down, pet!” he chided her, nothing but affection in his deep voice. He turned back to Gaius, his steel-blue eyes flashing with joy and mischief.

“What is it?” Gaius asked, almost overwhelmed by Bado and Frey’s combined ecstatic energy. Bado’s smile widened.

“Gaius, you’re gonna be an uncle!”


End file.
